LUCASVILLE (AP) – Ohio executed death row inmate Gary Otte Wednesday morning for killing two people in 1992 in back-to-back robberies.
Otte was put to death by lethal injection at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville.
Otte did not sleep overnight and spent the hours before his execution visiting with his parents and talking to friends and family on the phone, JoEllen Smith, a state prisons department spokeswoman, said.
She says Otte showered early Wednesday, and shortly before 7 a.m. was praying with his parents.
Otte was sentenced to die for the Feb. 12, 1992, killing of Robert Wasikowski and the Feb. 13, 1992, killing of Sharon Kostura in their apartments in Parma.
The Ohio Supreme Court earlier Wednesday morning declined to halt the execution and refused to hear an appeal from Otte’s lawyers who argued he shouldn’t be put to death because of his age at the time of the crime.
Otte’s attorneys wanted the court to apply the ruling of a Kentucky court last month that found the death penalty unconstitutional for people who were under 21 at the time their crimes were committed.
Otte was 20 when he killed Wasikowski and Kostura.
The U.S. Supreme Court denied his attempt to delay execution Tuesday.